"I'm the dog"

El Berro and Camping Sierra Espuña are nicely positioned for walking in these 'low' Sierras and of course the obligatory GRXYZ long distance path crosses the village. The campsite people gave us a couple of short walk suggestions, written on A4 and translated by some English guy, Michael Ball. We waited until the end of the afternoon, so that the temperature was somewhat manageable and then picked one of the ~1 hour walks that start at the campsite.

The walk is so simple that there's no description, just a small diagram that's well annotated with the type of path (wide main track / footpath), other markers (gate, incorrect route, fence). You can't go wrong, can you? Well the first part was easy. Follow the path out of the village, up a valley, through woodland, up and up. Then reach the ridge and the marked ring of stones. Don't turn right, carry on straight across. Then wander through a few trees and down to a dry riverbed, at which point you walk the (very short indicated distance) back to the village. Simples!

Well somewhere between ridge and dry river bed, the path disappeared and we walked across scree, scrub and tried to move down the side of the valley in which we expected to find the dry river bed. Well we did, but it was quite a tricky descent and I was concerned because glancing back to see from where we had come, it was really hard to see our route. At the dry riverbed I made a pile of stones to mark the point of entry and checked my watch. We began to walk downhill. Ok so we were in the correct place but we didn't know for sure. There was no phone signal and I hadn't done a download of the local Google maps (top tip if you do expect to have "no signal").

It was a thirty minute walk back but the point is that this was a massive ravine lined by huge crags, there was no way out up the sides and if we had made a mistake and were walking down the wrong path, there was no way of knowing. The area is so sparsely populated that getting back to El Berro might have been a challenge. Anyway we didn't get lost after all!

We left our site (and some squabbling sixty-somethings from the UK in an adjacent motorhome) and set off north-ish, expecting a nice scenic drive and a wild camp somewhere. It was to be a great day.

There were plenty of almond trees. We have seen small scale orchards? in Andalucia but now we were into the big stuff.

The landscape looks like South Africa or Utah, with huge crags rising from the plains, sometimes as table lands.

Every now and then a village appears. usually in a stunning setting and a castle is almost always involved!

I could go on an on about the amazing landscapes but my descriptions won't be sufficient. Vast areas appear to be open-cast quarries with associated spoil heaps. Others look as though they will erode so quickly that there'll be nothing left next week. There are huge rocky outcrops, big escarpments, bluffs that are bigger than anything in the UK. The quarry thing is just that it looks as though the big "heaps" are loose material. In fact they might be loose but there is so little precipitation that erosion happens only slowly. At the side of the road you can see rock and soil that in the UK would be gone in a flash, yet here it must take years to erode, or at least there's only one or two events per year where some gets washed away.

This landascape continued through the drive north until, near the end of the day, we started to look for a wild camp. On this trip, having the toilet has made things so much easier. We can stop anywhere and leave no traces. 😆

We made an instant decision to turn up a little side road to have a quick look at a tiny hamlet perched on a crag. We drove up and around, past a guy splitting logs in his garage and then were stopped by a no entry sign as the narrow street was blocked by long term building walk to a house. We got out and walked around. There was nothing there but we took in the view back to the castle and walked back to the Landy.

Still wondering where we would sleep we saw a short track just below the road that petered out after 200m. Driving down it actually stopped in a small picnic area, alongside a constant water outlet of the type that are found all over. They are marked as agua potable sin trata(miento)

That's where we made dinner and got ready for a peaceful evening.

Whilst we were eating, two local ladies came for a walk to inspect the new area and I felt that I should tell them what we were doing. Our Landy doesn't look like a normal motorhome and anyway no normal motorhome would drive down here.

So using Google translate, I said something like, "We are going to sleep here for the night. We have our own water and toilet so will respect the place. Will that be OK?"

The ladies were quite serious but very friendly and said all sorts of stuff that we couldn't understand. Eventually I gave one my phone and asked her to type-in what she was saying.

...which translates to, "we will ask but should be no problem".

ASK?? Who are they going to ask for permission? It's a tiny place. So I typed in the question and the reply was..."The Mayor". I nearly choked on my dinner. Why does a place with about three houses have a mayor?

We decided to risk it and said goodbye, hoping that the Mayor would come before bedtime at least. We finished dinner, washed up using hot water from one of our 10l containers, that we put on the wing of the Landy as soon as we stop. In these temperatures it soon warms up.

The sun went down, the temperature dropped and just as we were relaxing, a truck came down the track and a man got out and walked towards us, with a stern look on his face.

"It's the Mayor, who else?"

"Yes but he's wearing a boiler suit."

"Well he's definitely coming this way"

After some posturing it became clear that he wasn't the Mayor but a concerned farmer who wondered "what the b';^&&y hell you are doing here?"

He explained that his flock of sheep were on their way onto our track and this is Carlos who appears to do this every night. By writing in the gravel we learnt that there are 480 of them and they know where to go. We were able to impress him by telling him that Dawn is the daughter of a well known Derbyshire sheep farmer. They came past us slowly and remarkably were controlled by three huge goats wearing the biggest bells I've ever seen.

The absolute best part was that when they were about 100m past us and starting to stray from the desired route, Carlos whistled, a shrill whistle and they all moved to the right and continued to walk. He did it one more time and they did the same. There was no sheepdog and we told him, "In England we need a dog to do that". He simply said, "I'm the dog".

He jumped in the truck and was gone. We went to bed.